The title tag and why it’s important?

Your web site’s title tag sits up on your browser tab and its important to your web site. We’ll get into that in a bit. But for now, we’re going to explain a bit more about the title tag’s use for raising your SEO.

At Sprout Digital, we use a fairly common formula of “service/product + location + company/person” when writing our title tags. This was developed to help solve a simple issue. When someone is searching for something online, they normally use this same method. But, they won’t know the name of the company.

This is the least important piece of the puzzle. For example, “vancouver wa web site design” would be a reasonable search engine request to find Sprout Digital. If you were to swap the location and product/service, you would have “web site design vancouver wa.” This matches more of what people might search for.

Common search practice shows that people start to type in the product/service. And only after they realize that they are searching nationally. So, they append the location on to the end of the search. If someone was trying to find Sprout Digital (but didn’t know the name of the company), they would type “web design” (and immediately after discovering they were in the middle of a national search), they would then type out “vancouver wa” on the end and search again.

The same goes for any other service. Here are some examples:

roofing vancouver wa

window cleaning vancouver wa

chiropractor hazel dell wa

dentist longview wa

printing battle ground wa

For each of these search results, you’d be able to find a list of companies that are limited to the service/product and also the location.

The importance of placing a location in your title tag can’t be understated. Many searches that are happening online multiply by the thousands when you search nationally, and not locally. Without adding the title tag’s service/product/location pieces, you’re stating that a ‘searcher’ knows the company name and will find you based on that piece of information.

The only problem with that statement, is that the customer would have most likely found you. In this case, your web site isn’t doing its job as a salesperson for your company. At that point, it’s nothing more that one of those guys who stands out at the road waving a sign to prospective customers. They already know you are there, and you’re just letting them know…again.

The individuals that are online, and NOT finding your site are the customers that you NEED to succeed. If you can draw them to your site, and not your competitors, you’ve taken one person who didn’t have knowledge of the field and “converted” them to a lead.

Now that you know the importance of a title tag for your site, come back soon for an article on “the worst title tag you could possibly ever use.”